Sliced and diced

The latest project is now well under way...the small Robert Inghamish box in burr elm and African ebony. Yesterday I sliced and diced up the material which can be seen in the pic. The main carcass material is in 9mm birch ply with 3mm veneers over the top (which will eventually be planed down to around 2mm) The two strips of mahogany are the balancing veneers for the inside of the box and as I intend to fit a lining of maple, this is not going to be seen. I was surprised though, at just how easy it was to slice up the burr...the bookmatched pair on the right will be for the underside of the base and the two big pieces at the top are for the lid. The technique here is going to be slightly different to the main construction in that the lid panel will be veneered both sides and then the ebony will be routed into it in series of parallel grooves...should be interesting to do.

In the mean time, I had a couple of warrants to re-frame for my boss (Maj Nev Smikle) at work. He'd had them done years ago in cheap and nasty commercial frames which were appalling...one of the warrants didn't even fit into the rebates and both were held in place by strips of sellotape.

It will be of no surprise then that I got off to a sound start for the New Year as I had to replace one of the long frame sides...twice! The first was due to a machining error (the last pass through the thicknesser) and the second happened at the bench when I cut the first mitre. Nothing wrong with that, except it was the wrong way round and the wood was 4mm too short by the time I'd cut another mitre. Having glued up both of the new frames yesterday, I'll be routing out the slots for the inserts in the mitres which ought not to take too long.

The cost of this little job has just about covered a new addition (something I've wanted for a long time) to the armoury which ought to be here on the 'morrow...